Ms Maria Joyce:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for the invitation to speak here today but also for these issues to be raised on the floor of the Seanad as well, which is important.

I want to also add my support to the fact that a Roma woman is speaking today. On the one hand, it is historic, but it truly reflects the lack of diversity across the body politic both in the Seanad and in the Dáil that is long overdue rectification. I also commend the two young speakers, James Stokes and Latisha McCrudden, for sharing their experiences. They represent so much that is positive about so many of our young people but it is sad to still be hearing of the obstacles they have to overcome and the issues they have to address to have an absolute right to education and a right and entitlement to the other things that are afforded to all our young people in Ireland, which are still being denied to young Travellers.

It is close to two and a half years since the publication of the final report of the previous joint committee, which contained 84 recommendations across health, education, employment and accommodation. It would be interesting to run the rule over those 84 recommendations to assess progress in implementation. There might be a few areas showing some signs of promise, but no honours grades would be handed out. Two and a half years will not seem like a long time for policymakers but it is a very long time when you are living in homeless accommodation. It is a long time when you are trying to keep your child in school and they are crying on an ongoing basis that they cannot stick the bullying and the othering. It is a very long time when you are living in poverty and trying to support your family and you cannot get work because of your surname or your address. Two and a half years feels like a lifetime when you are mourning the loss of a loved one through suicide, which too many Travellers so often are, with suicide rates for Travellers six and seven times the national average as has been referenced earlier.

With regard to education, there continues to be a stark inequality of access to participation in, and outcomes from, education for Travellers. Just 13.3% of Traveller women and girls are educated to leaving certificate level or above, compared with 69.1% of the general population. Less than 1% of Travellers are in third-level education, with only 167 adult Travellers having a third level qualification. Ann Friel spoke earlier about Covid-19 and what STAR could do to help in supporting Traveller children and their parents during that Covid period, and their engagement with the school. This is so important and highlights the need for really targeted supports and measures. For many Travellers around the country - and unfortunately the STAR pilot is only in four locations - school closures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic posed a really challenging disruption for Travellers and deepened their educational disadvantage. The move to remote learning relied entirely on having IT equipment, stable Wi-Fi and a quiet place to work, things many Traveller families simply do not have access to, particularly those in overcrowded living conditions, poor accommodation and in homeless settings. They just were not able to do it. It is important to acknowledge as well that Covid-19 did not create the onset of issues impacting on Travellers in education but they have added to particular difficulties when it comes to transfer rates from primary to second level. We have seen Traveller children drop out at primary school as a result of Covid and not go back. These transfer rates also impact on the ongoing transfer rates into third level.

Currently, we have the ongoing development of the national Traveller and Roma education strategy, which is a welcome development. We have an action plan on bullying, which was launched in 2022, and the national access plan, which sets targets for Travellers in higher education. Setting targets and putting in resources is critical in creating a critical mass of Travellers in education.

We also have the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, 2023 Traveller culture and history research report. It is very badly needed when we listen to what Latisha McCrudden was talking about, having gone through the whole system, as many of us have here. There are still young Travellers going through a system that does not have them reflected in the curriculum. This is really critical.

The forthcoming national Traveller and Roma education strategy must include a robust implementation and monitoring framework and resources to address the systemic disadvantage of Travellers at all educational levels. The work which has begun on the use of ethnic data in education must be built upon, shared and inform what needs to happen next.

Consultation with the Traveller and Roma community is under way across a range of strands for the new strategy. We have attended a number of the sessions and listening to the contributions from Traveller parents has been a stark reminder, if one was needed, of the racism and bullying still experienced by Traveller children in Irish schools and underlines the urgent need for schools to rethink how they support diversity and cater to the needs of all young people in their schools. I would go a little bit further than that to say that the schools need to do their job. They need to deliver on national policy to ensure better impacts and outcomes for Traveller children from the education system.

I will talk a little bit about justice and then political representation, given the space we are in this morning. Although Travellers account for 0.6 % of the Irish population, Travellers make up 22% of the female prison population and 15% of the male prison population. Those figures are from the limited data we have. Although an ethnic identifier has been introduced in the prison system, we still know that, at times, that is an under-representation of the number of Travellers who are in prison. At times, up to a fifth of young people in custody at Oberstown Children Detention Campus have been Travellers. In 2017, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW, recommended that the State address the root causes of the over-representation of Traveller women in places of deprivation of liberty and address prison condition standards. That recommendation was issued seven years ago but there has not been the progress we need in that space. The State must address the factors contributing to Travellers’ over-representation in prison, particularly Traveller women, and introduce alternative community-based responses for those who have committed non-violent poverty-related offences.

A key contributing factor is the level of racism and racial profiling across the criminal justice system, including policing, probation and the courts. Systemic, cultural and attitudinal changes are needed to address this. Although access to justice is a fundamental human right, Travellers are frequently denied it. This has to change. Travellers’ voices must be heard, their rights exercised and decision-makers held accountable in the justice process, which is not currently happening.

Given that we are gathered here in the Seanad Chamber today, I will use this opportunity to speak about the lack of representation of Traveller and Roma women in Irish politics. Few communities in Ireland have been as negatively impacted or affected by political decisions and indecision as the Traveller community, yet we remain largely invisible within the political establishment. This cuts across all areas of policy, be it health, mental health, accommodation, education or employment. Traveller women have a strong history of leadership and advocacy in community development spaces and their engagement in public and political life stretches back many decades. The most significant development in recent years was the appointment of Senator Eileen Flynn in 2020 as the first, and to date only, Traveller to serve in one of the Houses of the Oireachtas. This has to change. There has to be more opportunities and routes into the political system.

In 2022, the NTWF commissioned Professor Pauline Cullen and Shane Gough of Maynooth University to prepare an account of how Traveller, Roma and other ethnic minority and migrant women engage with and experience local politics in Ireland. We wanted to provide an evidence base for the systemic changes that are required to be taken by political parties, local authorities, the Electoral Commission and the State if Traveller and other ethnic minority women are to access political life in a meaningful way. These asks are not rocket science and this is not the first time some of them have been identified. Our asks include the creation of a nationwide special electoral district for national representation and county-wide special electoral districts for local representation of Travellers, with gender parity. There is a need for the incorporation of nested ethnic quotas into existing gender quotas, specifically naming Traveller and Roma women as political candidates at national level, and the introduction of a similar quota system at local level. If we want real change in the political space and across all other areas of policy, clear resources will be needed and targeted measures must be implemented. We are calling for the creation of a Seanad panel for minority communities, including Travellers and Roma, with the establishment of reserved seats in the Seanad and the Dáil for Travellers and other ethnic groups, as well as targeted actions to support Traveller women who are interested in running for election.

I want to finish by emphasising the lack of implementation across all Traveller policy. It is an issue hiding in plain sight. Bureaucratic delays and Government inaction must come to an end if there are to be any real changes in the lived lives of Travellers.